Nokia has announced that it has secured €500 million from the European Union’s (EU) European Investment Bank (EIB). Nokia plans to use the loan in order to accelerate its research and development of 5G technology.

“5G is happening fast, faster than most people even expected. It's anticipated that it will enable entirely new business cases, while dramatically enhancing existing wireless applications. I think bringing 5G to the market will definitely improve people's lives, as the motto for the EIB's 60th anniversary states.”

Meanwhile, Nokia CFO, Kristian Pullola, said:

“We are pleased to land this financing commitment from the EIB, who shares our view of the revolutionary nature of 5G - and the realisation that this revolution is already underway. This financing bolsters our 5G research efforts and continues the broader momentum we have already seen this year in terms of customer wins and development firsts, supporting our relentless drive to be a true leader in 5G – end-to-end.”

With the money, Nokia will continue developing its end-to-end solution for enabling 5G. The solution includes the radio network, the internet protocol, the optical networks for transmission, the packet core network, service platforms and all the software and services associated with the whole system. Once finished, Nokia will be able to offer its solution to telecom operators that want to provide fully converged fixed-mobile communication services require for 5G.

We will start to see wide scale roll outs of 5G beginning in 2019 and 2020 and over the following decade will act as the backbone for technologies such as virtual reality, augmented reality, driverless vehicles, medical monitoring, advanced industrial automation services, and other applications.